Stina Nordenstam

Swedish singer, composer and producer Stina Nordenstam was born in Stockholm on March 4, 1969. Gifted with a fragile voice, she weaves ethereal atmospheres with pop, ambient, trip-hop and even slowcore music to create an intimate, experimental universe. After a jazz-inflected pop debut, Memories of Color, in 1991, the follow-up And She Close Her Eyes took three years from writing to production, until its release in 1994. The singer, who had turned down the advances of British independent label 4AD, signed with EastWest and won critical and public acclaim, reaching No. 5 in Sweden, while "Something Nice" reached No. 100 in the UK charts. In 1996, Dynamite saw the artist move away from her acoustic, minimalist, intimate style and venture into slowcore, with rougher tones. Stina Nordenstam followed this up with an album of quirky covers of Prince, Leonard Cohen and others, People Are Strange (1998), then returned to dreamy pop on This Is Stina Nordenstam (2001), featuring two duets with Suede singer Brett Anderson. Three years later came the darker The World Is Saved. The singer has lent her voice to projects by Vangelis, Fleshquartet, Yello, Bill Laswell, Zbigniew Preisner and Nine Horses, among others.